To distinguish between learned and unlearned responses is not always an
easy task. It cannot be assumed that responses which are absent during
the first weeks of life are all learned. To take the most obvious
instance; sexual responses change their character to a greater or less
extent at puberty, as a result of changes in the ductless glands, not
as a result of experience. But this instance does not stand alone:
as the body grows and develops, new modes of response come into play,
modified, no doubt, by experience, but not wholly due to it. For
example: a new-born baby cannot run, and therefore does not run away
from what is terrifying, as an older child does. The older child has
learned to run, but has not necessarily learned to run _away_; the
stimulus in learning to run may have never been a terrifying object. It
would therefore be a fallacy to suppose that we can distinguish between
learned and unlearned responses by observing what a new-born infant
does, since reflexes may come into play at a later stage. Conversely,
some things which a child does at birth may have been learned, when
they are such as it could have done in the womb--for example, a certain
amount of kicking and stretching. The whole distinction between learned
and unlearned responses, therefore, is not so definite as we could
wish. At the two extremes we get clear cases, such as sneezing on the
one hand and speaking on the other; but there are intermediate forms of
behaviour which are more difficult to classify.
This is not denied even by those who attach most importance to the
distinction between learned and unlearned responses. In Dr. Watson’s
_Behaviorism_ (p. 103) there is a “Summary of Unlearned Equipment”,
which ends with the following paragraph:
“Other activities appear at a later stage--such as blinking, reaching,
handling, handedness, crawling, standing, sitting-up, walking, running,
jumping. _In the great majority of these later activities it is
difficult to say how much of the act as a whole is due to training
or conditioning. A considerable part is unquestionably due to the
growth changes in structure, and the remainder is due to training and
conditioning._” (Watson’s italics.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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